Cite as: 528 U. S. 62 (2000)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
The Eleventh Amendment simply does not support the Court's view. As has been stated before, the Amendment only places a textual limitation on the diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts. See Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U. S. 234, 286-289 (1985) (Brennan, J., dissenting). Because the Amendment is a part of the Constitution, I have never understood how its limitation on the diversity jurisdiction of federal courts defined in Article III could be "abrogated" by an Act of Congress. Seminole Tribe, 517 U. S., at 93 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Here, however, private petitioners did not invoke the federal courts' diversity jurisdiction; they are citizens of the same State as the defendants and they are asserting claims that arise under federal law. Thus, today's decision (relying as it does on Seminole Tribe) rests entirely on a novel judicial interpretation of the doctrine of sovereign immunity,6 which the Court treats as though it were a constitutional precept. It is nevertheless clear to me that if Congress has the power to create the federal rights that these petitioners are asserting, it must also have the power to give the federal courts jurisdiction to remedy violations of those rights, even if it is necessary to "abrogate" the Court's "Eleventh Amendment" version of the common-law defense of sovereign immunity to do so. That is the essence of the Court's holding in Pennsylvania v. Union Gas Co., 491 U. S. 1, 13-23 (1989).
I remain convinced that Union Gas was correctly decided and that the decision of five Justices in Seminole Tribe to overrule that case was profoundly misguided. Despite my respect for stare decisis, I am unwilling to accept Seminole Tribe as controlling precedent. First and foremost, the reasoning of that opinion is so profoundly mistaken and so
6 Under the traditional view, the sovereign immunity defense was recognized only as a matter of comity when asserted in the courts of another sovereign, rather than as a limitation on the jurisdiction of that forum. See Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon, 7 Cranch 116, 136 (1812) (Marshall, C. J.); Nevada v. Hall, 440 U. S. 410, 414-418 (1979).
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